Pros

Cons

Awkward side design and button layout.
Limited control over lighting.
For right-handed use only.
Annoying use of Windows notifications.

Bottom Line

You may love the Havit HV-MS735 MMO Gaming Mouse if you're a hard-core gamer, but poor implementation of a few of its key features prevents it from being ideal for everyone.

6 Mar 2017Matthew Murray

Manufacturers of gaming mice may face the most difficult path to innovation within the computer hardware industry. The mouse thrives on, even demands, a certain simplicity of purpose, but getting any individual product to stand out from the crowd isn't easy. With its HV-MS735 MMO Gaming Mouse, Havit has generally taken the safe path, delivering a decent swath of features, customizability, and solid driver software for a surprisingly low price of $49.99. But if the HV-MS735 is a good deal, a key departure or two from the norm prevents its execution from being great.

Design and Features

On its face, the HV-MS735 looks unremarkable if not unattractive. When off, it's all black, with most of the top panel (including the left- and right-click buttons) matte. There's a patch of glossiness near its bottom, under which your palm rests during use, labeled with the words "Magic Eagle" and accompanied by a picture of a bird of prey with its wings outstretched. The scroll wheel has a textured center for easier control, and gray plastic on the sides; positioned immediately below it are an Up and Down button (by default, for cycling through DPI choices, which we'll get to).

Plug in the mouse and it becomes more daring, with colorful, cycling lights that set off the "Magic Eagle" logo and limn the edges of the scroll wheel. This also calls attention to the HV-MS735's most dynamic feature, the 12 buttons on the left edge near where your thumb rests while in use, which glow in a solid blue. (Perhaps it goes without saying, but this mouse is for right-handed users only.) Bringing the total number of buttons to 19, this definitely brands the mouse as one for hard-core MMO players who may need or want to assign plenty of functions that can be accessed with a single, split-second click.

Software

The effects of these buttons, as well as the nature of the lights and most other details of the HV-MS735, can be adjusted using the mouse's driver software. (A mini CD is included in the box, though of course you can also download it from Havit's website.) Upon starting, the application displays a picture of the top of the mouse, with each of the seven buttons labeled; open the Button Assignment menu to see (and, if you like, change) the function assigned to each. Because these are pretty standard, you probably won't need or want to, but the option is there. Click on the Side button below the diagram to set up what each of the 12 left-side buttons do. These are all disabled to start with, which undoubtedly helps reduce confusion while you're acclimating to the mouse.

There are a lot of other options in here to tweak, too. DPI Setting lets you specify seven stages of DPI to step through using the arrow keys on the top of the mouse, upping any to as much as 12,000 and putting them in any order you want. (One of the four lights in a column on the top of the mouse will light up depending on which of the four initial stages you choose; this doesn't exactly make sense, given that there are seven total, but it's harmless.) Under Lighting you can adjust the time delay of the default Neon effect, or switch to and configure Respiration (a single color, slowly brightening and dimming) or Standard (always on) mode. Select from any of four options under USB Report Rate, or 11 under Mouse Speed or Double Click Speed, if you want to make any adjustments to those. With Scroll Speed, you can alter the behavior of the scroll wheel. Angle Snap (which you can turn on or off), Gesture Correction (from -2 to 2), and X/Y Sensitivity (from 1 to 10 on both axes) are the final options.

As is typical for software of this type, you can also record and manage macros, or establish new profiles for certain games or other activities. Although the software isn't as splashy or expansive as you'll find with some mice, it's well designed and easy to navigate.

Performance

For as much as Havit got right in the basics of the HV-MS735, it fell down a bit in usability. The mouse isn't especially comfortable, mostly thanks to the unusual left-side design. The thumb rest at the base of the mouse juts out quite a bit, and at an odd angle, which means it's in the way a lot and not at a place the thumb on the hand naturally falls (or at least the thumb on my hand). The buttons above it aren't much better. They protrude at uneven, unpredictable distances, following the contours of the mouse side in an awkward way. This deployment is clearly to ensure you can quickly find and press any of them without looking, but it's neither effective nor intuitive when you're using the mouse in a non-gaming situation. To avoid bumping into these buttons at the wrong times, I found myself twisting the mouse (and thus my wrist), which was neither ideal nor ergonomic. Unless you desperately need all the buttons on the HV-MS735, you may find something like the Editors' Choice Corsair M65 RGB Laser Gaming Mouse more comfortable, but still highly adaptable to your play style.

The mouse's myopic gaming focus is evident, too, in the lack of dedicated Forward and Back thumb buttons—there's just no room for them here, but they're probably the controls you'll use most after left- and right-click. Sure, you can program two of the 12 buttons with these commands, but they're not going to be as convenient to access.

You may also find yourself irked by a dearth of lighting options. You have control only over the patterns in which it glows, not the colors, so if you don't like Havit's choices (or the default blue color it uses for the Standard effect and the 12 left buttons), you're out of luck; the Razer DeathAdder Chroma gives you millions more options, despite costing about the same. And I got more than a little annoyed at the mouse's usage of Windows 10 notifications. It popped up one every time I used the Up and Down buttons to switch the DPI, which is bad enough, but it also gave me multiple warnings that the mouse couldn't be detected after I unplugged it. This kind of stuff is unnecessary at best and irritating at worst.

Finally, there's a chance you might not appreciate that the mouse only comes in a wired version. The cable is long enough (about 6 feet), and cabled is generally the preferred way to go if you want to reduce potential latency issues, but it's something to be aware of.

Conclusion

The Havit HV-MS735 MMO Gaming Mouse is not for everyone. Its potential hurdles in terms of convenience and comfort will be too much for some players to jump over. But if you're really into MMOs, or other games or activities that benefit from a vast number of function keys, it's not a terrible way to go—and its attractively low price does a lot to soften the blow. If, on the other hand, these issues matter less to you, you'll probably prefer one of our Editors' Choice gaming mice, such as the Corsair M65 RGB Laser Gaming Mouse if you like big and imposing, the Logitech G Pro Gaming Mouse if you prefer lean and mean, or the Razer DeathAdder Chroma if you want more control over how it looks.

About the Author

Matthew Murray got his humble start leading a technology-sensitive life in elementary school, where he struggled to satisfy his ravenous hunger for computers, computer games, and writing book reports in Integer BASIC. He earned his B.A. in Dramatic Writing at Western Washington University, where he also minored in Web design and German. He has been building computers for himself and others for more than 20 years, and he spent several years working in IT and helpdesk capacities before escaping into the far more exciting world of journalism. Currently the managing editor of Hardware for PCMag, Matthew has fulfilled a number of other positions at Ziff Davis, including lead analyst of ... See Full Bio